1985 | 1928
Grandpa Abe is angry.
Marilyn watches as he nearly knocks over the portrait of Emma Goldman that sits on the large radio, overlooking a comfortably chaotic living room. The apartment is not a large one, and every corner that isn’t taken up with furniture seems awash in books, magazines, and pamphlets written in both English and Yiddish.
As he strides into the room, she steps back involuntarily. He doesn’t see her, of course. She is merely an artifact of his future, a ghost of potential tomorrows. “Did you hear, Chana?” he demands of the empty room. “It never changes. No matter what country you are in, it never changes.” Short, dark hair curls up, radiating electricity (“You got your hair from your grandfather,” Marilyn’s mother always told her). His hands, heavily stained with the chemicals he uses as a textile worker, sweep the air as he speaks.
He prowls the room, unable to keep still, a vibrant presence that astounds Marilyn, who just knows him as a flat, black-and-white presence in old photos. A moment later, a stout, pretty woman comes in from the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. “Shah—stop yelling,” she cautions. “The little one is napping.” Her long dark hair, uncovered in defiance of her religious upbringing, is pinned precariously up behind her head. The skin on her face is firm, with only a few small lines around the eyes and mouth. Marilyn stares, amazed at her youth.
“So, what happened?” asks her grandmother Chana patiently.
“What do you expect?” Abe answers. “Moshe just came back from Kentucky. He said that the bosses sent out the police, some heads got bashed, some good men put in jail. Enough scabs showed up so that the strike is broken. Just the same as every time. What should be different?”
“At least this time nobody was killed,” her grandmother says firmly. “Not like last year, remember? Mrs. Shapiro’s boy Noah, who is recruiting down South? He told her that five were shot, right there in front of him.” She drapes the towel lightly over her shoulder and settles herself in a chair, staring at him with the air of a woman ready for a long, familiar discussion.
“Noah is a liar,” her grandfather tells her. “And a lousy one at that. Nobody else seems to see the horrors he has. And somehow, he always escapes injury by the skin of his teeth. A real Superman, that one.”
Chana shakes her head. “How can you say that? You remember, his wife Martha called me to take a look at him the last time he came home. I myself saw the scars.”
“Scars? More like bruises from Martha’s tongue. And while he plays at revolution down South, the real battle is right here …” And the argument goes on.
Don’t waste your time, Marilyn tells them. In another decade a war will come, and after that prosperity. The factory workers will win their raises, and they will buy cars and homes, while their shop stewards become friends of the companies and everyone forgets why the unions were formed.
They ignore her, while she presses on: Listen to me, Grandpa. Leave the union and the job before your health is ruined by chemicals and long hours. Grandma, stop fighting the owners, and the politicians, and your own children, and find yourself something of your own, something for yourself. Before it’s too late.
Marilyn is interrupted by a girl, about seven years old: torn dress, smudged face, knees raw and bleeding. “Papa,” she yells, her dark eyes triumphant. “Papa, Jakie said that his father said that we were dirty Reds. I beat ‘em up good, Papa!”
Chana stands, resigned. “Another fight,” she sighs. “I’ll get the peroxide. Abe…” She pauses. Abe is staring at the girl as though he has just now recognized her. “Abe!” she repeats, louder. He shakes his head and turns to her. “Stop woolgathering and talk to your daughter.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “But for a moment…She is very like Malka.”
His wife kisses the top of his head. “I know,” she says. “But this is not Malka. This is Becky, and right now she needs her father to explain why she shouldn’t attack the boy next door.”
She leaves, while my grandfather pulls the girl over to him gently. “Becky,” he says, smoothing her hair, “Becky, it’s good to defend your ideals. But remember, Jakie is also a member of the proletariat, and it is better to persuade him to join you in the fight against the landlords and the factory owners than beat him up. We have to all stick together. You understand?”
The girl thinks for a moment, scraping her foot against the carpet. Marilyn knows that carpet; a small square of it served as a welcome mat the day her grandmother died. “I guess,” Becky says reluctantly, then she looks up and grins. “Okay. I won’t beat ‘im up next time. But this time, I did it good!”
“Becky!” comes a cry from the bathroom, and the girl kisses her father and marches triumphantly off. Marilyn wants to rush after her, but she can’t move. Come back, mom! she tries to yell at the child. Don’t listen to your father. Keep your mouth closed and your opinions to yourself, or you’ll waste your adulthood running from McCarthy’s blacklist, and your money on lawyers to keep you out of jail, and your health in disappointment at the betrayal of your dreams.
But the girl is gone. Marilyn takes a breath, puts a hand in her pocket and presses her thumb into the small control she had been given.
A different place. A large plush room. No trinkets, no photographs—only spotless wooden furniture and overstuffed green chairs. Two boys, one with a swollen cheekbone, sprawl on the rug listening to the radio while a large-jawed man sits in a chair and shakes his head over a newspaper. “Lazy,” he mutters in heavily accented English. “All lazy. There’s work if you look for it.”
Marilyn stares at him. I know who you are, she says. You bastard. You will rot in hell, she tells him, hoping it to be true.
A crash from the next room. “Quiet, Millie!” he calls impatiently. “I can’t hear the announcer.”
His wife comes in, a tall thin woman with narrow, patient eyes. Her hair is hidden by a plain kerchief; she clutches a dust rag in her hands. “Sorry,” she says. “Nothing broken. A book knocked over, that’s all.”
The man grunts, and turns back to his newspaper. She waits for a moment, and then retreats into the bedroom.
No, Marilyn whispers, don’t let him grind you down. He’ll do it if you let him, do it slowly and totally. Until you are too frightened to move or talk without permission. Until all your frustration and anger and fear roll themselves into a tight ball and lodge themselves in your stomach to fester and kill you before you see any of your grandchildren born.
She looks at the two children on the rug. The older boy, perhaps 14, scratches patiently at some arithmetic homework, his lower lip caught between his teeth. He pauses, reads it over, and then hands his assignment over to his father. The man scans it carefully. The boy waits.
Don’t worry, Melvin, Marilyn soothes, you’ll do fine. You’ll get good marks, and go to college, and make your way in the world. True, you’ll abandon your first wife and daughter, and you’ll turn your second wife into a bitter and disappointed woman. But you will have your own house and your own business, and you will live with your father’s approval, if not his love.
The father hands the paper back with a satisfied nod. The boy beams.
His wife emerges again, heading for the kitchen on the other side of the room. On her way, she pauses to gently touch the hair of the younger boy, who is lost in the world of the radio, of courageous spacemen rescuing grateful young women from ravenous alien monsters. This is my child, the gesture says.
“Jakie, the face, it still hurts?” she asks.
The father looks up. “Don’t baby him, Millie,” he says sharply. “He let a girl get the better of him. At this rate, he’ll amount to nothing.”
All Marilyn’s restraint goes, and she cries to the child, Be careful! Be careful of your father, who cannot love you; be careful of the coming war, which will scar you; be careful of your job, which will stifle you; be careful of your children, who will disappoint you. And be careful of your cigarettes, which will kill you. Be careful. Please. Please!
The boy turns his head. Can he hear? Marilyn reaches out to him, and with that movement he shimmers, and disappears.
“So,” asks the technician, detaching the leads. “How did it go?”
For a moment, Marilyn can’t breathe. The tech hands her a box of tissues and continues to disconnect her from the system.
She wipes her nose, regaining control. “Was it real?” she finally whispers.
He shrugs. “We don’t really know,” he says. “The technology is really new, more alpha than beta. In fact, we have no idea whether we’re going to be able to go public with it. The developers say they’re pulling from genetic memory, but I’ll tell you the truth, some of us are starting to believe it’s just wishful thinking, built from the stories we’re told as children. Depends on who you talk to.”
He stores the last component in its place and helps her up. “You should go home,” he advises. “Lie down. It’s a pretty intense experience, and there can be physical aftereffects. Some dizziness, maybe, some nausea. You should be fine by tomorrow, though.” He pauses. “And remember, you signed a non-disclosure. You can’t tell anyone about this until it goes commercial. If it ever does.”
Marilyn nods, and thanks him, and walks out of the room, through the lobby, and out into the late day sun. It’s the end of a work day; around her, people talk, laugh and argue as they make their way home. She keeps pace with the crowds as she heads toward the train station; a flock of pigeons soars overhead.
The spirit of her unborn daughter follows and cries out to her, unheard.
